Electric vehicles are well known in the transportation art. Popularity of such vehicles is again on the increase for a number of reasons, including the non-polluting characteristics of such vehicles.
Vehicles powered by electricity, however, do have drawbacks. For example, the current state of technology limits the range of such vehicles. The batteries of a conventional electrically powered passenger car or other road vehicle often have to be recharged after about 125 miles or even considerably less. Most electric automobiles incorporate battery packs which are permanently or semi-permanently installed; that is, the same batteries remain in the car and are recharged over and over again. This results in considerable accumulated downtime for the vehicle due to the fact that the recharging procedure is relatively slow. Only after the performance of the batteries has deteriorated significantly are they removed from the vehicle and replaced.
It is known to insert and remove batteries relative to passenger cars and other vehicles as modular packs wherein a plurality of batteries are in each modular pack. For example, the following patents illustrate such arrangements: U.S. Pat. No. 3,838,745, issued Oct. 1, 1974, U.S. Pat. No. 3,847,242, issued Nov. 12, 1974, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,109,064, issued Aug. 22, 1978. Other representative arrangements are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 3,876,086, issued Apr. 8, 1975, 4,102,273, issued Jul. 25, 1978, and 3,708,028, issued Jan. 2, 1973.
Prior art arrangements are generally characterized by their relative complexity and high expense. Furthermore, removal and insertion of prior art batteries and battery packs in electric powered vehicles is often a time consuming matter, not only because of the relative complexity of such arrangements, but also due to the fact that electrical interconnect between the batteries and battery packs and the electric system of the vehicle is itself time consuming, often requiring considerable work by the installer.